


My Roots Are Grown

by UnnamedElement (Unnamed_Element)



Series: Writings from Wartime: The Fellowship (Collection) [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fellowship of the Ring, Gap Fillers, Gen, Missing Scenes, One Word Prompts, Vignettes, Word limits, book!verse, drabble challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27842332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unnamed_Element/pseuds/UnnamedElement
Summary: Drabbles that tell who the Fellowship are, and who they have become by the time they parted ways. Based on NirCele's 100 drabble challenge.I did seven of them, and then decided I only liked five of those, which sums up my entire creative process fairly well.
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel & Legolas Greenleaf, Boromir (Son of Denethor II) & Legolas Greenleaf, Frodo Baggins & Sam Gamgee, Gimli (Son of Glóin) & Legolas Greenleaf, Merry Brandybuck & Pippin Took
Series: Writings from Wartime: The Fellowship (Collection) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2028670
Kudos: 23





	1. Fire: Legolas & Gimli

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted elsewhere in Spring 2016 with a different format, with the following approximate note:  
>  _I obtained the prompt list for NirCele's 100-Drabble Challenge from LadyLindariel. My drabbles will primarily feature the characters of the Fellowship. For the purposes of this collection, I have challenged myself to constrain these responses to 600 words (longer than a "true" drabble). Story title is from The Head and the Heart's song "Cats and Dogs."_

* * *

**1\. FIRE  
**

* * *

It was like nothing he had ever felt—like a festival bonfire on every side, a taunting ring of fire with no escape. Heat radiated from its center with such vigor that it was as if the very sun spilled its yolk, poured forth like molten steel from a crucible.

But there was no sun above them here.

Here: an eternal darkness, and a fire darker than any sun. A sun that pulled in, destroyed all light, took every remnant of good: memories of leaves backlit with sunlight; cool kiss of rain at the forest's edge; balmy nights, spent with friends, clothed in starlight—his soul was compelled toward it; it would feed off this new despair, crush him under stone—in fire and darkness—condensed forever in the heart of this beast; he panicked—

He knew what it was.

As his skin burned, yet did not, the snaking smoke suffocated him. He heard his own voice gasp, then cry in fear and warning, and the fletching of his arrow caught on a callous as it fell to the stone—it bounced twice and settled like a fallen tree.

_Ai! ai! A balrog is come!_

Inside him was the aftermath of a forest fire—burned out and crumbling, black and desperate in that moment before the last spark fell, when the ground was not yet cool enough to safely cross: hopeless.

He could not breathe.

He felt Gimli drop his axe and the dwarf cried in recognition. Mithrandir bid them flee, but Boromir and Aragorn, perhaps in ignorance of such horrific lore—or perhaps because they were better men than he—stood still, swords raised like guardsmen.

He shouldered his bow and stumbled backwards. He caught a hobbit under each arm, hauling them round the middle when they did not move. Above the sound of cracking rock was Mithrandir's final command—

_Fly, you fools!_

—and then Boromir and Aragorn were across the bridge and they stumbled pell-mell up the stairs.

He did not let go of the hobbits until they were out and far away from the sounds and smells and smoke of Moria, and then he fell to his knees and turned his face to the bright clouds and high sun, but dropped it again to cough into his arm.

As he coughed, he noticed dimly that Gimli stood beside him. The dwarf tapped his cheek until he met his eyes—both saw that the other wept.

_Legolas, drink._

Gimli handed Legolas his own waterskin, and then Legolas cast himself upon the ground with the waterskin on his chest. He covered his eyes with the heels of his hands.

He lay like that for a long time until he heard Gimli shift beside him. Legolas sat up and coughed again. He uncorked the skin and took a sip of water to ease his throat. When he handed the waterskin back to Gimli, he had found his voice.

"Let us help Aragorn, Master Dwarf. You talk to Merry, and I will take Pippin."

Gimli nodded and walked away. Legolas picked up his bow, ran a hand over his face, and breathed deeply. He crossed to the hobbits and placed a gentle hand on Pippin's shoulder.

Pippin curled into him. Legolas bit his lip, and soothed him best he could.

* * *

 **Word count:** 549


	2. Pet: Sam & Frodo

* * *

**2\. PET**

* * *

Sam was happy to be able to do anything for Frodo, now that they no longer pushed toward Mount Doom, and he no longer worried on when he would bury Frodo's body. Sam had thought on it often as they wandered—when Frodo trembled and fell, eyes wide but glazed, picking rocks from worn toes and dropping them from fingers, unfeeling—but Sam did not think he _could_ bury Frodo. Frodo, who had gone farther than anyone should have, and who had dragged Sam along—far _far_ away from the Shire—wholehearted, devoted, willing—with him.

"…the Quest is achieved, and now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam."

Sam shook his eyes from the undoing laid out before him. He laughed and fell to his knees, and then Frodo fell beside him like a shadow. They sat facing each other for a moment—silent in their joy and despair—and then they leaned into one another, head on shoulder, head on shoulder.

After some time, Sam pulled away and frowned. He took Frodo's arm in both hands and brought it to himself; he wrapped the bleeding hand in the shirt still on his back. Sam kept Frodo's hand pressed firmly into his stomach with his own, but he could feel the blood saturate his shirt's fabric, and finally run warmly down to his pants' tattered waistband.

Sam dropped dry lips to Frodo's dusted brow as he looked out into the utter ruin, cloaked in swirling dust and an evil, cutting wind. He pet Frodo's hair from crown to forehead, over and over, untangling curls as if he worked the mane of a well-loved packhorse, which, Sam considered—with a surprisingly un-resentful burst of amusement—Frodo very much was.

Frodo: A vessel for the ring. A packhorse with its cargo, and Sam: his reluctant master. Together: A means to the end.

A dry, hot breeze hit Sam's face as he scooted closer to Frodo. He swept the grey cloak of Lorien about their shoulders. For a moment, Sam tasted the sweetness of the light in that place, and his memory brushed deeper—green carrot tops in moist brown soil.

But then it was gone.

Sam swallowed a sigh, or sob, and took that last hopeful memory into his tired lungs. He ran a hand through Frodo's hair again, and his strength left him. He lay down—spent.

It was better that he die here, Sam thought fiercely, alongside Frodo, than he bury his friend in this desolate place—alone!—and then stumble down the mountain to die elsewhere (likewise terribly _terribly_ alone).

They lay now face to face, and breathed.

Frodo's hand twitched against Sam's stomach; he was pulled toward sleep. Sam ran a finger across Frodo's eyebrows to soothe him, and Frodo's eyes came open long enough to raise his uninjured hand to Sam's temple—he wiped blood away from skin.

They would rest here as the darkness burned away—all around them—into light. Later, they could move with all their strength from the mouth of this place and, when hope had finally failed, Sam would stop and close his eyes. He would wait for those silver shores, grass as green as the Shire in May, rolling endlessly on. They would step forward into that land, unfettered and, at last, free.

Frodo had carried the cargo well, Sam protecting his spirit best he could, and this was finally _finally_ the glorious end.

There was a smile, but it was so hot, and the air like poison.

* * *

 **Word Count:** 600 


	3. Plants: Merry & Pippin

* * *

**4\. PLANTS**

* * *

" _It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them, a little. But I don't know why I am talking like this. Where is that leaf? And get my pipe out of my pack, if it isn't broken."  
—Merry, "The Houses of Healing," __Return of the King_

* * *

Watching Merry pack his pipe filled Pippin with joy.

It was the kind of joy Pippin felt for the first time when he was ten. That winter, he noticed how, every year, the youngest greenfinches fled Tuckborough's gardens for fairer lands. In his tenth year's crispness, he saw that the finches returned only after the last threat of frost, only when certain there was seed enough to thrive and to mate, to build nests, dig deep…

But return they always did.

Pippin remembered well a summer day another year. Merry was nineteen-and-a-half (and thought himself grown indeed). That day, Pippin watched a finch flit toward a sunflower and land on it resoundingly—its tiny body made the great plant sway side to side as if rocked by a wind. Pippin cried out in joy and surprise: "Merry! Would you look at that powerful bird! It moves the world as if to say, 'Summer! It's here!'"

Merry at first only glanced at Pippin and nodded sagely, but he eventually took him by the hand, into the garden. He lifted Pippin to the neck of a sunflower that bent beneath the weight of runaway morning-glories. Held at the waist by his cousin, Pippin freed the giant flower, and its face turned once more to follow the sun.

Pippin had been so worried.

Merry steadied the pipe in his lap with his arm's deadweight; he pressed the last layer of leaf into the bowl with his left thumb. Turning eyes toward Pippin, Merry's brow smoothed, and he slipped his pipe between dry lips.

"They call you the Prince of Halflings, you know," Merry said, vaguely. "I wonder what lies you told them to make them believe that."

"I didn't tell any lies at all!" said Pippin, narrowing his eyes. "Anyway, Merry, do you need help? What did you put in your pipe?"

"Longbottom leaf, Pippin. Have you gone soft in service to the Steward?"

Pippin's hand shot out; he pulled the pipe easily from Merry's grinning lips and sniffed.

"You ass!" Pippin exclaimed. "You mixed in kingsfoil!"

Merry's eyes were soft; he looked kindly on his cousin's disbelief.

"Yes, it is a most useful weed."

Merry sank back into the cot and closed his eyes.

"I suppose it is," Pippin muttered. "But I do not think Strider intended you to _smoke_ it. You are supposed to breathe it _in_ , and he is supposed to say words over you and touch your brow and such."

He pressed the pipe into Merry's hand, and Merry's fingers clutched it weakly. Merry shrugged and quietly spoke.

"Either way, it's in my lungs, Pip."

"I suppose it is, you stubborn fool!" Pippin said, sad and renewed and happy all at once. "Well, you can smoke it later. Sleep now!"

Pippin kissed Merry's brow. Merry smiled and fell into an unlabored sleep.

To Pippin, watching this rest was like a clement breeze; a finch at thistle; strawberries bruised in eager palms at the break of day, dew still clinging to fresh green caps.

 _They were resilient,_ Pippin thought, _stuff of the Shire: strong Bucklanders and Tooks, defenders, now, of Middle-earth._

Pippin leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes and felt for Merry's hand.

Their roots were deep, the two of them.

He drank the feel of Merry's fingers in his own like the first rain after a long drought—a balm on his young and weary soul. It turned his face to the sun, and Pippin reached his arms upward; in a dream, he sprang off with Merry like a finch, bound for the Shire's summer light.

* * *

 **Word count:** 600


	4. Threats: Legolas & Boromir

* * *

**5\. Threats**

* * *

"We are sons of dying realms."

They stood on a wooded hill, some distance from camp.

"Surely you know what I want from you, Legolas. You are quicker than I; together we could end the threat to our lands."

The elf had one hand on his hip, head tilted, and he looked at Boromir with grey eyes like sun-warmed slate, gentle and patient, but hardening.

"You need only—"

"No."

Legolas came close and peered up into Boromir's face with a ferocity Boromir did not recognize.

"Do not speak these folly hopes aloud, son of Gondor," Legolas hissed, hand moving to his knife's handle. "You will find no ally in me."

Boromir moved as if to slap him, but Legolas caught the strong hand as it reached his cheek, and twisted.

"I know you, Boromir. You are not lost."

Legolas dropped his hand and turned away.

"Do _not_ prove me wrong."

Legolas retreated, and Boromir called after him.

"You are gutless, Legolas! You fear what you would _do_ with such power!"

The elf did not turn, and Boromir picked up a stone from the ground.

"To the elves who did not aid your folk; to Aragorn, for giving you Gollum at the first."

Boromir took a step forward.

"If you do not understand why I seek the Ring, Legolas, then you do not know me, nor your people, nor yourself."

Boromir heaved the stone toward Legolas with force.

"You will live to regret this refusal!"

Legolas ducked his head and skipped sideways, so the stone only hit his shoulder. The elf's hand brushed trees and bushes as he passed—they seemed to swell and grow, closing behind him like guardsmen.

A fog lifted from Boromir, and he saw clearly again. He dropped a second stone and cried out in grief; he wrung his hands.

When he finally returned to camp, Boromir heard Legolas' cheerful voice and Pippin's laughter. The elf did not look up from where he sat cross-legged with Merry and Pippin, teaching them sleight of hand. Boromir sat beside Gimli and skinned the rabbit passed to him.

"I will take first watch," Boromir announced.

"No!"

Legolas sprang to his feet, accidentally pulling Merry with him. He turned to Aragorn.

"I will take it."

"Very well," said Aragorn.

Legolas sat again, and cast his eyes, momentarily, to his shoes.

"You see, Peregrin," Legolas eventually restarted, "you must cup your hand like…"

Legolas took Pippin's hand in his and shaped it, but Boromir was not listening; Aragorn leaned in to him and Gimli.

"Legolas is uneasy and the hobbits shrink from the trees," Aragorn said quietly, inclining his head toward them, and then nodding to Frodo and Sam, who slept nearby. "Some of us should take a different road."

"Legolas and the Little Folk?" Boromir asked.

"Perhaps," said Aragorn cryptically. "You did not return with firewood, Boromir. Will you find some now?"

"Of course," said Boromir, rising.

Legolas glanced up to see Boromir disappearing into the gloam. Frodo stirred at Legolas' side and moved, in his sleep, closer to the elf's warmth.

* * *

Several days later, they cast Boromir into the river, toward city and sea. Legolas' voice cracked as he sang, and Aragorn looked on with concern.

Legolas met Aragorn's eyes and shook his head.

It was not madness in Boromir alone, Legolas thought, that had broken them. He had been drawn to Boromir's pain just as he had been to Smeagol and, once again, that misplaced compassion—or something like it—had cost lives.

Gimli patted Legolas' arm, and Aragorn shrugged. Legolas turned away, eyes already to the chase.

* * *

 **Word count:** 600


	5. Water: Frodo, Legolas, & Aragorn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This drabble originally started as something quite different, and then became this. It was originally inspired by a few conversations with Finfinfin1 about characterization, conflict and motivation, and language. I encourage you to read Finfinfin1's story about the Doors of Durin ("Masters of Fate") on her [FFnet] page._

* * *

**6\. Water**

* * *

Frodo watched Legolas roll his extra tunic and tuck it away, pack stuffed already with poor Bill's rations. Frodo was just noticing how shadows from the elf's unkempt hair chased the curve of his flushed cheeks when Legolas looked up at him sharply, and spoke.

"You are uneasy."

Frodo shrugged.

"I still get an eery feeling from the water."

Grey eyes flicked from pursed lips to creased brow, settling finally on Frodo's bright, worried eyes. Legolas frowned.

"Perhaps hobbits are more like elves than I believed."

"How is that?"

The elf leaned toward him, as if to study their similarities.

"Well," Legolas said, after a moment, placing a hand on Frodo's shoulder, "I do not much like this place either."

Frodo stared, and then nodded; he settled cross-legged by Pippin.

Legolas shouldered his pack and strode past the the Company to Aragorn, who was hunched on a rock, sucking his pipe. Legolas crouched before him and whispered; he jerked his head toward the pool and cocked it to the side.

Aragorn watched the darkness over Legolas' shoulder while he tapped his pipe on the ground. He blew out the ash and slipped pipe in pocket. Finally looking up, he met the elf's eyes, and reached forward.

Frodo watched Aragorn cautiously tuck a lock of knotted hair behind Legolas' ear—he had become disheveled after their encounter with the wolves and had not taken time to tidy himself after Caradhas. He did not exactly _flinch_ as Aragorn's hand brushed his cheek and ear, but his body tensed.

Legolas looked on edge, and that unsettled Frodo.

He seemed to relax when Aragorn whispered in their shared tongue. Legolas returned Aragorn's gaze and shrugged; he glanced away and leapt to his feet, watching the pool with unfocused eyes.

Aragorn called to him. Legolas shook his head and did not turn.

After a time, though, he seemed to sense Frodo's regard and pivoted, shifting his weight forward to move closer, or to speak.

But in that moment, Boromir complained to Frodo and heaved a rock at the water. Legolas' eyes narrowed as it splashed, and he stepped back, hastily, to Aragorn.

Frodo tore his gaze from Boromir as Legolas crossed his arms and leaned close, eyes lowered.

Aragorn hissed severely in Elvish, but then spoke more softly. He turned Legolas' face to his by placing a finger under his chin. Frodo could not hear what was said, but he caught a whisper, a reprimand: _Legolas, you are braver than this._

The elf's nostrils flared and his eyes darkened, before—with the ephemeral abruptness of a sparrow's shadow, darting, cast from overhead—Legolas looked up and smiled. Irreverently, he patted Aragorn's cheek and rocked back onto his heels. Aragorn stared with a mixture of amusement and shock, and laughed.

But then Gandalf exclaimed and the doors opened and, all at once, great _things_ came from the water: Aragorn leapt forward; Boromir seized Frodo's waist, but he was caught already, and tumbling. Pippin, Sam, and Merry rushed forward blindly, shoved through the doors by Gimli; Aragorn tugged an arrow from Legolas' fingers and pulled at his wrist.

And then they were in.

Pippin gasped beside Frodo. Legolas whispered a prayer, and—perhaps in response—Gandalf lit his staff.

Frodo watched the wizard's light play at Legolas' brows. The elf's lips were pressed together tightly, his wide eyes glassy.

And then Frodo knew.

Aragorn shoved past them to speak with Gandalf, and Frodo saw the ranger's hand flit across Legolas' back, reassuring.

The door must have collapsed.

They were trapped—there was no way out.

* * *

**Word count:** 600


End file.
